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Publisher's Description

From Trans-Tex Software:
Tex-Edit Plus is a scriptable, ASCII text editor that fills the gap between Apple's bare-bones TextEdit and a full-featured word processor. It's fast, efficient, and has a clean, uncluttered interface. It's also great for cleaning up text which is transmitted over the Internet.

Occasionally uses non-standard chars. which can interfere with other apps.

Summary

I have used Tex-Edit Plus for over a decade as my "quick and dirty" text processor. the latest versions are now much faster to load. It's interface is clean and simple. This is simply my go-to text processor when I need assistance with my programming business.

I have been using Tex-edit Plus for many years. I am editor of a Mac user group newsletter and it has been absolutely wonderful at cleaning up text in articles other members have sent to me to use in the newsletter. I have also used it to clean up text I get off the internet and want to save in documents for one reason or another. I can instantly transform a messed up text document into something that looks good with just a keyboard shortcut. If necessary, I can replace occurrences of text that isn't right with something that is right.

I was really bummed out when I started using Mac OSX Lion because my copy of Tex-edit Plus no longer worked in Lion. I hunted for another application that could do that job and the closest I could find was TextSoap, but I have to say Tex-edit Plus blows TextSoap out of the water. I only accidentally discovered that Tex-edit Plus has finally been updated to work in Lion and I am so grateful to the author.

Cons

There are no cons unless you count the long time it took to get this updated copy.

Summary

I actually prefer to use this application as my word processor rather than Word or Pages. Since I also use InDesign, if I need a fancier formatted document, I can import text from Tex-edit Plus into InDesign.

Small, fast, powerful, intuitive, no clutter, simple and sane. The best of the minimalist text editors. Support of RTF documents. A Universal binary, running natively on both Intel and PPC platforms. Excellent text-to-speech features. Fully scriptable including support for Automator. Total control over UNIX and DOS formatted text. Inexpensive.

Cons

There are no cons.

Summary

It has been my pleasure to own and use Tex-Edit and its descendants from ages past through today.

While using Mac OS X 10.6, I was a bit displeased with problems in version 4.9.8 and thoroughly dismayed that it no longer worked in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. But now:

Tom Bender, the developer, has thankfully put hard work into version 4.9.9 such that it is again my favorite and most used text editor. It is actually a relief to be able to use Tex-Edit Plus X after contending with the multitude of alternatives. It is intuitive, powerful and just works, all without clutter and crud getting in the way.

I write just about everything in Tex-Edit Plus X, then toss the text into a more powerful manager or page layout program for my finished product. I wouldn't do it any other way. When I write I just want to write without any distractions from my text editor.

Then consider the terrific raft of features in Tex-Edit Plus X that reside under the hood. It is THE BEST text-to-speech reader available, bar none. It allows integration of audio, graphic and video into your files. It is the boss of UNIX and DOS formatted text, allowing you to do anything you wish with it. It lets you see an manipulate all your text formatting. It is thoroughly scriptable, including working with Automator. It has a WYSIWYG font list. It allows full font styling, text and page coloring, markup, hilite coloring, justification, indenting, GREP, find and replace, sorting, line numbering, character and word counts, auto-save, automatic character smartening, page numbering, margins, ruler control, soft wrap and RTF (rich text formatting). Did I miss anything?

Get it, love it. There are no 'nags' to buy it. But it's only $15. I own multiple licenses just to thank Tom Bender for keeping it alive, well and excellent.

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.Tex-Edit has been a long favorite of mine but it is being rapidly being taken over by programs that have been updated. Bean which is Cocoa native, open source, free. and able to handle formats Tex-Edit goes 'Huh?' regarding has started replacing this program.

As for Tom Bender writing Tex-Edit in Pascal that should be no barrier to Intel native code as it appears FreePascel 2.2.2+Xtools 2.x and GNU Pascal 3.4.5u2+Xtools 3.x can both produce Intel native code.

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.If you consider all the elements that go into making an app stellar, TEP has them all, e.g. reliability, rapid and meaningful updates, usability, great interface, massively useful, small CPU footprint and so forth. I have never, in well over six years of using TEP, lost a file. A while back, I thought I had experienced my first problem with TEP and the author immediately straightened me out with a friendly e-mail - it was not a problem with TEP, but my usage thereof. I, too, have paid more than once and will likely send in another donation because this author truly serves the entire Mac community in the "old school" sense of what shareware should be all about.

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